Quotes About Observation

I wouldn't say that I dislike the young. I'm simply not a fan of naïveté.

When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.

not that anyone was actually keeping one.

Danielson was a talking head in his fifties

Monk guzzled the water and tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder.

Duncan looked at Eve. "I think I'm going to like him." "You're a dog," Eve said. "You love anyone who gives you food." "Woof, woof," Duncan said, then swiveled to face his desk and get to work.

Miracles aren't always awe inspiring. They aren't always beautiful and obvious. Sometimes they're sticky and gross. Sometimes they're painful and full of loss. Sometimes you'll miss them if you blink. My eyes are wide open today.

I began by reducing my own salary to $ 1.00 a year. Leadership means setting an example. When you find yourself in a position of leadership, people follow your every move. I don't mean they invade your privacy, although there's some of that, too. But when the leader talks, people listen. And when the leader acts, people watch. So you have to be careful about everything you say and everything you do.

Social psychology stands at the intersection between our eyes and the world in front of us, and helps us understand the difference between what we think we see and what is actually out there.

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHER HERACLITUS left us a lovely epigram: Nature loves to hide. It is so often true. There is no way Heraclitus could have seen an atom. No matter how much his fellow philosophers speculated about them, to see an atom was beyond any technology they might have imagined.

These last few points are key to how quantum mechanics works, so let me summarize them: The wave represents the quantum state. When we leave the system alone, it changes in time deterministically, according to Rule 1. But the quantum state is only indirectly related to what we observe when we make a measurement, and that relation is not deterministic. The relation between the quantum state

These last few points are key to how quantum mechanics works, so let me summarize them: The wave represents the quantum state. When we leave the system alone, it changes in time deterministically, according to Rule 1. But the quantum state is only indirectly related to what we observe when we make a measurement, and that relation is not deterministic. The relation between the quantum state and what we observe is probabilistic. Randomness enters in a

But, even if the quantum state gives us only probabilities for what we observe, once we get a result, there is something that is definite, because afterward you know exactly what the state is. It is the state corresponding to the result obtained by the measurement. Suppose we measure an electron's momentum, and get the result that the electron is moving north with momentum 17 (in some units). Then, just after the measurement we know that the

Rule 2 raises a whole bunch of questions. Does the wave function collapse abruptly or does it take some time? Does the collapse take place as soon as the system interacts with the detector? Or only later, when a record is made? Or perhaps later still, when it is perceived by a conscious mind? Is the collapse a physical change, which means that the quantum state is real? Or is it just a change in our knowledge of the system, which means the

Recent measurements reveal a universe consisting mostly of the unknown. Fully 70 percent of the matter density appears to be in the form of dark energy. Twenty-six percent is dark matter. Only 4 percent is ordinary matter. So less than 1 part in 20 is made out of matter we have observed experimentally or described in the standard model of particle physics. Of the other 96 percent, apart from the properties just mentioned, we know absolutely nothing.

The wavelength of a lightwave limits how small a thing you can see, for you cannot resolve an object smaller than the wavelength of the light you use to see it. Hence, one cannot detect the existence of an extra dimension smaller than the wavelength of light one can perceive.

One way to unify things that appear different is to show that the apparent difference is due to the difference in the perspective of the observers. A distinction that was previously considered absolute becomes relative. This kind of unification is rare and represents the highest form of scientific creativity. When it is achieved, it radically alters our view of the world.

I think it is very important that films make people look at what they've forgotten.

How do you bring alive the things you perceive?

I tend not to analyse my work, though I'm frequently intrigued when other people take time to do so.

Dogs have hair. Cats, fur. Dogs whine, yip, howl, bark. Cats purrr. I say: No contest.

My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed--though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.

We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look, children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day.

when meeting someone, our brains are in overdrive. Remember Shakespeare's Julius Caesar? He said of Cassius, he "has a lean and hungry look . . . he thinks too much . . . such men are dangerous.